Church Heritage Record id19013

West tower, nave with north aisle, chancel with north vestry. There is a south porch which forms the entry to the church.

The west tower is dated by a stone on the south wall with lead lettering and Roman numerals giving the completion date as 1504. The style of the nave and chancel goes with this also, but these were restored by Pearson in sympathetic manner between 1886 and 1891, beginning at the east and working westwards. The builders were Weatherby and Jones, and the cost wasborne by the incumbent, the Revd. C.W. Hudson.

The west tower is of three stages marked externally by moulded stringcourses; at all corners are diagonal buttresses which die into the walls before the top stage, and the base stands on a moulded plinth. The ground stage has a three-light window with panel tracery in the west wall and on the south wall, about ten feet from the ground, is the stone with dated inscription in lead letters. These are fixed by small pegs and the second integer of the 'iiii' is missing. The middle stage has tiny rectangular slits in each face. The tie-rods which bind the tower together terminate in loops fixed by stays in the form of pointed crosses with bifurcate arms. The belfry stage has tall bell-openings of two lights with cinquefoiled heads under simple moulded hoods, those on the west and south partly obscured by the diagonally placed clock faces of open metalwork. The parapet rises above a further moulded stringcourse and is crowned by eight equal pinnacles replaced in dark sandstone, which contrasts with the rest of the stonework. One bell is hung in a wooden frame at the south-east corner.

The nave is long and low, with typically Perpendicular low-pitched gablus and embattled parapets. In the south wall the porch comes first, a nineteenth-century addition in Early English style which looks older than Pearson's work, with a moulded two-centred arch and steeply pitched gable crowned with a foliate cross. Then, distinguished by two buttresses, come three windows. The central one is of three lights with cinquefoiled heads within a four-centred arch emphasised by a deep hollow moulding. The hood-mould is correspondingly rather thin. Each side of this are windows with square heads and hood-moulds, each of two lights but with differing tracery. That to the west has ogee-headed lights with a circle of three daggers between the heads and that to the east has also ogee-headed lights but with two mouchettes over each. The buttresses which divide the windows from each other are very plain, with three offsets, and the plinth which surrounded the tower continues along the wall.

The chancel though less tall than the nave is the same width and has the same embattled parapets and low-pitched roof. It is further embellished with stubby pinnacles at the eastern corners and one on the south side. The south wall has two three-light windows of which that to the west has tracery of trefoils in triangles and that to the east has three very simple trefoiled lights. Both are square-headed and the western one has a moulded hood. The east east window is of three-lights under a four centred arch from the same design as the west tower window, but with rather wider proportions. It is flanked by diagonal buttresses at the corners. On the north side of the chancel is a three-light window and a blocked rectangular aperture which may have led to the rood stair. East of this is a completely nineteenth-century vestry under a pent lead-covered roof with a small two-light window in the east wall with ogee-headed lights and a tall thin doorway in the west wall. 

The north aisle of the nave is said to be wholly an addition by Pearson on the mediaeval foundations of two chantry chapels, but there seems no reason for supposing that he differed from the existing design, particularly since the two chapels may be discerned in the pent roof of the two western bays and the cross-gabled, transept-like roof of the eastern bay. The wall-surfaces are entirely of 1886, and the windows of three-lights throughout to two differing designs, are more regular than elsewhere in the church. There is no plinth except to the buttresses which divide the bays and all hich the windows have hoodmoulds. The gable of the transeptal bay has battlements but the other parapets to the north, east and west walls are, unlike those elsewhere in the building, finished with a horizontal capping. In the north-west angle is a small doorway, long disused, which may represent the common mediaeval feature of an external lost doorway to chantry chapels.

The interior is two steps lower than the churchyard outside and is paved with stone flags including some good ledger slabs. The plain pews stand on raised timber platforms. The tower space is screened from the nave by a timber screen with open Gothic tracery, and in front of this is the nineteenth- century font on two steps. The arch itself seems to on two have been replaced according to the old design, and is of two chamfered orders of which the outer descends unbroken to the floor and the inner is supported on moulded semi-octagonal corbels. The western angles of the tower are canted, one to contain the staircase but the other for no apparent reason.

The church is quite dark because all the windows are filled with stained glass, an important feature since the east window is by Clayton and Bell of 1865 and the rest with glass by Kempe forming a complete cycle throughout the nave and chancel. In the west windows are a few mediaeval fragments. The roofs are all nineteenth-century, of a good construction with stout tie-beams and cusped wind-braces. The windows for the most part have simple unadorned reveals, only one of two having the additional detail of a simply moulded rere-arch chamfer. The north arcade is of three bays, the two chantry chapels being distinguished by the solid block of wall which forms the first pier from the east. The two west bays are uniform, with chamfered arches of two orders resting on single keeled responds with square capitals and semi-octagonal bases against the east and west walls. The middle pier is round, with an octagonal base and a square capital which almost looks to be seventeenth-century classical. The eastern arch, which opens into the cross-gabled section of the aisle, has the same two chamferedorders and keeled responds as the western pair.

The nave is the same width as the chancel, and only one shallow step marks the division. This is however reinforced by a delicate screen in the Perpendicular style with three ogee-headed openings each side of imuation a wider central arch. The roof construction of the chancel also differs, having more pronounced arch-braces which come lower on the wall. The chancel is lavishly floored with diagonal squares of black and white marble which in the sanctuary give way to smaller squares of more diverse colours. The east wall has a dado of Italian marble and and the the reredos is of three panels in bright Cosmati work.